Sanders Has a Radical New Proposal: Give Americans 50% Ownership of AI Companies

Senator Bernie Sanders is ready to take on Silicon Valley in the most direct way yet. He plans to introduce the American AI Sovereign Wealth Fund Act, a bill that would impose a one-time 50% tax on the largest AI companies, paid in stock rather than cash, and grant the federal government voting shares and equal board representation at those firms. The targets: OpenAI, Anthropic, and xAI. The argument: the public built AI, and the public should own a piece of it.

In a nearly seven-minute video message, Sanders laid out exactly what his legislation would do. “It would do two extremely critical things,” he said. “First, it would give the American people a direct role in determining the future of this technology. No longer would the future of AI be dictated by a handful of Big Tech oligarchs, while the rest of the world sits back and watches them do what they want.” He went straight past the usual policy debate about licensing and safety rules.

The argument Sanders is making cuts to the core of how AI systems were actually built. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has acknowledged that AI models were trained on humanity’s “collective experience, knowledge, and learning.” Sanders seized on that admission directly: since the technology was built on collectively owned knowledge, the wealth it generates should belong collectively to the people whose knowledge made it possible.

Sanders Says Billionaires Are Extracting Wealth That Belongs to the Public

Sanders said plainly: “The time has come to reclaim what was stolen from us. Since AI is built on the collective knowledge of humanity, the wealth it generates must benefit humanity, not just Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, Larry Ellison and other billionaires, or the venture capitalists and Wall Street firms who see AI as the next great wealth-extracting machine.” That framing turns the proposal from a tax debate into a moral claim.

Under the plan, the shares transferred by AI companies would be held in a sovereign wealth fund managed on behalf of the American public. Revenue generated by the fund would flow out as direct cash payments to Americans, particularly in the early stages. Over time, as the fund grows, proceeds could also support healthcare, education, and housing. Sanders framed it as a structural correction, not a handout.

The proposal goes considerably further than anything the AI industry or the Trump administration has floated. OpenAI’s earlier sovereign wealth fund concept involved taxes on profits and voluntary participation. Sanders is proposing a mandatory transfer of half of each company’s outstanding equity, paired with governance rights that give the government active co-control, not a passive investment position. The gap between the two is significant.

Alaska Pays Dividends, Norway Built a $2 Trillion Fund. Sanders Wants Both

Sanders pointed to two existing models to justify his proposal. Norway’s Government Pension Fund Global, funded by the country’s oil revenues, now holds over $2 trillion in assets, equal to roughly $390,000 per Norwegian citizen, making it the largest sovereign wealth fund in the world. The Norwegian government draws from the fund to finance public services without touching the principal, allowing wealth to compound across generations.

Alaska operates differently. Unlike Norway’s fund, which does not pay annual dividends directly to citizens, Alaska’s Permanent Fund distributes payments each year to its residents. Those payments, drawn from oil royalties, have run between $1,000 and $2,000 annually since 1980. Sanders envisions a fund that would generate “billions, if not trillions, of dollars” to provide direct payments to Americans while eventually supporting healthcare, education, and housing for every person in the country.

The federal government already holds equity in one major tech company: in August 2025, the U.S. took a 10% stake in Intel through an $8.9 billion investment, though Intel described it as passive with no board seat or governance rights. Sanders’s proposal would be five times larger by equity share and would include active governance power. That distinction, between passive investment and effective co-control, is where the legal and political battles will likely be fought.

The Bill Faces Long Odds. The Argument Behind It May Not

Brad Gastwirth, global head of research at Circular Technology, told Newsweek that while the broader idea of sharing AI-driven economic gains has support across parts of the AI industry, the specific mechanism Sanders is proposing faces enormous political, legal, and practical hurdles. A mandatory transfer of 50% ownership would likely draw fierce opposition from industry and investors. Democrats currently hold the minority in both chambers of Congress.

Sanders’s AI Data Center Moratorium Act, introduced in March 2026, attracted not a single Senate cosponsor. For investors in AI companies, the more immediate risk from a bill like this is sentiment. The mere introduction of such legislation creates headline risk for OpenAI, Anthropic, and xAI at a moment when these firms are actively raising capital and negotiating valuations. Political posturing, even when it fails legislatively, shapes markets.

What Sanders has done, regardless of whether his bill advances, is force the question into the open at scale. As he wrote in a New York Times guest essay, “No longer would the future of AI and the transformation of human life that it will bring be dictated by a handful of Big Tech oligarchs.” Whether Congress acts on that claim or not, the companies building these systems now have to answer it publicly, in front of a government that knows how to pick up a cap table and read it.